


Copyright N° c-6f >yZ. 


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“AND I, M’ LADY, AM HER HUSBAND.” Page Q, 


Some Good Intentions 


• AND A BLUNDER 


T-^J! Kffr 

JOHN OLIVER HOBBES _ 


Author of “A Bundle of Life’ 


ILLUSTRATED 




7-t^ent ' O-n 


NEW YORK 

THE MERRIAM COMPANY 


67 Fifth Avenue 



Copyright, 1895, by 

THE MERRIAM COMPANY 


i 1 
* 1 

c ( c 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

“And I, m’ lady, am her husband,” 

Frontispiece 


“Then your ideal would be a beautiful 

woman with a squint?” 15 

As a wheel touched the brink Egg 

leaped out 27 

Then sat down on a moss-grown 

. bench 41 

She turned away and pretended to be 
looking at a picture over the fire- 
place 


53 


MERRIAM’S 

VIOLET SERIES. 


Illustrated, Square 321110, Cloth, 40c. 


No. G 

I. — A Man and His Model. 

By Anthony Hope. 

II. — The Body-Snatcher. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson. 

III. — The Silence of the Maharajah. 

By Marie Corelli. 

IV. — Some Good Intentions and a Blunder. 

By John Oliver Hobbs. 

V. — After To-Moirow. 

By the Author of “ The Green Carnation.” 


OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION. 


For sale by all booksellers , or will be sent post-paid 
upon receipt of price by 

THE MERRIAM COMPANY 

Publishers and Booksellers 


67 FIFTH AVENUE 


NEW YORK 


SOME GOOD INTENTIONS 

AND A BLUNDER. 


CHAPTER I. 

“ The pheasants were scorched to the 
bone,” said Lady Boyd Hopjay. “ Look- 
ing back upon the soup, I can recall 
nothing but paste ornaments and hot 
salt water. Can you supply me with a 
reason?” She looked at Timpany, her 
butler, and waited a reply. 

“ The shortcoming m’ lady halludes 
to,” said Timpany after a pause, “might 
be hascribed to Mrs. Timpany’s having 
had what vulgar persons call a upset.” 


8 


“ The cellar stairs or the laundry lad- 
der?” inquired his mistress. “ I told 
her she was too shortsighted for the 
one and too heavy for the other, and 
that she was to send one of the under- 
maids. But if people persist in neglect- 
ing warnings given for their good, they 
must take the consequences.” 

“ The upset, m’ lady,” said Timpanv, 
“ was moral, not physical. I meant, m’ 
lady, that Mrs. Timpany was out of 
temper. It is a less uncommon occur- 
rence, m’ lady, than I could wish, or 
you would suppose.” 

“You confound me,” returned Lady 
Boyd Hopjay. “ Mrs. Timpany has 
been in my service as cook for eight 
years, and I have always found her of a 
most equable disposition.” 

“With m’ lady’s pardon,” rejoined 


9 


Timpany, “ Mrs. Timpany has been in 
your ladyship’s service for eight years 
as cook, but only one year in mine as 
Mrs. Timpany. During the twelve- 
month she has manifested the posses- 
sion of what I should respectively beg 
leave to be allowed to call griding and 
grizzling proclivities.” 

“Impossible!” ejaculated Lady Boyd 
Hopjay. “ I am her mistress and ought 
to know/’ 

“ And I, m’ lady,” retorted Timpany, 
“am her husband.” Respect for his 
employer curtailed the sentence. “ She 
cried into the soup and nagged over the 
birds. She’s always doing one or the 
other.” 

“ One would have imagined,” said his 
mistress, “ when an excellent cook and 
an experienced butler entered into 


IO 


matrimony that such a union was ap- 
pointed by Providence.” 

“ Your ladyship brought it about,” 
said Timpany, without any conscious- 
ness that the retort might convey an 
uncomplimentary second meaning. 

“ And yet," said Lady Boyd Hopjay, 
awfully, “ your domestic differences 
darken my kitchen and cast a blight 
upon every dish that comes to table — 
upon an evening, too, when the Arch- 
bishop is dining here. Send your wife 
up to me in twenty minutes.” 

Timpany bowed over his high necktie 
and retired, but turned at the door. “ I 
feel sure, m’ lady, that your ladyship 
has too much justice to be prejudiced 
by any remarks made by Mrs. Timpany, 
whose temper is still on the simmer,” 
he began. 


II 


“ If any one prejudices me, that per- 
son will be yourself,” returned Lady 
Boyd Hopjay equably. 

“ Thank you, m’ lady. For if inter- 
fering to prevent, as is but my duty, 
an under-housemaid — whose good looks 
should not be weighed in the balance 
against her, she naturally not being 
able to help them — from being over- 
rode ” 

“ You can go,” said Lady Boyd Hop- 
jay. 

By this time you have realized that 
Timpany’s mistress shared to an ex- 
traordinary degree in that weakness 
common to many estimable and charm- 
ing women who have not found in mar- 
riage the alpha and omega of earthly 
bliss. For years ere the Indian liver of 


12 


General Sir Boyd Hopjay, K. C. S. I., 
beckoned that gallant soldier to an 
English vault she had ridden her hobby. 
She rode it still, and, to do her justice, 
she was past-mistress of that kind of 
equitation. It was her pride to point 
to a married couple and say, “ That 
man and woman would never have 
dreamed of taking one another for bet- 
ter or worse had it not been for me.” 
Whether the man and woman were 
grateful or not made no difference. 
Her chosen vocation in life was to 
marry people, and she fulfilled it. Like 
David, she reckoned up her victims by 
tens of thousands. The census had 
swollen at her bidding, and the records 
of the divorce court bore witness to the 
fact that many of those whom she had 
disinterestedly aided to become one 


13 


flesh had cheerfully availed themselves 
of the surgical assistance afforded by 
the law in becoming two again. 

But Lady Boyd Hopjay never lost 
faith. Backslidings grieved her, in- 
gratitude gave her pain, but she clung 
to her tenets, and went on delivering 
her evangel, and receiving fresh con- 
verts into the ranks of the married year 
by year and month by month. 

“ You look a little worried, dear,” said 
Lady Ali Bhye, rustling into tea. Lady 
Ali, as all the world knows, was the 
celebrated beauty, Miss Fann, who mar- 
ried Chief-Justice the Hon. Ali Maha- 
deva Govind Bhye, of the High Court 
of Judicature, Bombay; an immensely 
wealthy Hindu gentleman, who re- 
nounced Mohammedanism with all its 
privileges when the English belle 


14 


dropped into his dusky arms, but, it is 
whispered, returned later to the faith 
of the Prophet. 

“ Has anything been going wrong?” 

Lady Boyd Hopjay crumpled her 
eyebrows, always exquisitely drawn, 
and sighed. 

“ Timpany and his wife have been 
quarrelling.” 

“Your cook and butler? Nuisance! 
By the way, you made that match.” 

“ They were excellently suited in 
every respect ” 

“ But one. Now ” 

“ She cries into the soup, and Tim- 
pany’s plate no longer does him credit.” 

“ Why can’t they take different situa- 
tions?” 

“My dear Clara! whom He hath 
joined ” 



“THEN your ideal would be a beautiful woman 
with a squint?’’ Page 23. 










, ' 

















17 


“ Let no man- Of course ! But it 

generally is a woman who does the 
putting asunder. By the way, don’t 
expect me at Stokehole on the first. 
By that date I shall be on my way to 
the East, per P. & O.” 

“ You are going out to Ali?” 

“No. I have gathered, from reliable 
sources, that he is coming home to me. 
Therefore I take the opportunity, de- 
nied to me at other times, of renewing 
my acquaintance with the land of my 
adoption. We shall pass each other in 
the Red Sea. Don’t groan, you dear 
thing ! I would not 

‘“Unknot the ravelled past’ 

if the chance were given me. When I 
married, I didn’t marry Ali. I went to 
the altar with a jointure of £ 8,000 a 


8 


year, five rows of Oriental pearls, and 
a parure of emeralds big enough and 
beautiful enough to make empresses 
die of envy. I have slept with the 
pearls round my neck ever since, and 
when things look blue I take out the 
emeralds and they are green — the color 
of Hope once more. By the way, do 
go to the Pontarlet reception to-night J 
You like sensations, and there will be 
one there. She is Scotch, red-haired, 
quite raw, young, an heiress, and quite 
beautiful. Egg has christened her ‘The 
Northern Light.’ 

“ I have heard of Mr. Egg as ope of 
the latest university comets which have 
appeared on the literary horizon.” 

“ You should read his essays. He 
dissects life, love, religion, ethics, art, 
and society; minces small, and serves 


19 


up in little plats of a page or two with 
seasoning.” 

“ Is he a reformer?” 

“ Dear, no ! He holds that absolute 
wickedness is as beautiful in its way as 
absolute goodness, just as the alto 
relievo possesses its own charm, distinct 
and separate from the basso." 

“ One of the ‘Decadent’ school, I sup- 
pose. Unpleasant person !” 

“ You wrong him. He has nothing in 
common with the author of the ‘Fetes 
Galantes.’ ‘Morality, for the sake of 
morality, ’ is one of the texts he preaches 
from oftenest. But you will meet.” 

The prophecy was fulfilled. That 
night at the Pontarlet’s, in the slight 
stir and bustle which heralded a move- 
ment to the piano on the part of the diva 
of the season and her accompanist, the 


20 


hostess paused for a moment before 
Lady Boyd Hopjay’s chair, smiled, and, 
bending her long neck this way and 
that, passed on. Then a tall, slight 
man, in exceedingly loose clothes, 
drooped over one of Lady Boyd’s still 
handsome shoulders, and murmured — 

“ Privileged to meet you.” 

She answered in kind, and said that 
the rooms were hot. 

“ So I gather by the way the fans are 
pitching and tossing, like ships on a 
troubled sea.” 

“ Or a Bengal palm grove in a hurri- 
cane.” 

“ You know the East?” 

“Well; and you?” 

“ By heart.” 

“ Ah ! you have travelled much in 
Asia?” 


21 


“ Never in the flesh; in spirit, yes.” 

Lady Boyd Hopjay began to suspect 
that this must be one of the English 
Theosophists — a Mahatma from St. 
John’s Wood, probably. Under cover 
of her large fan she gave a little dis- 
gusted shudder. For her, society was 
divided into two classes — people whom 
it was desirable to know and be known 
by, and people whom it was best to 
keep at arm’s length. Professed fol- 
lowers of the occult were in the latter 
category. 

But the conversation dropped around 
them, and the diva sang the wonderful 
bird-like aria of Nedda in “ I Pagliacci.” 

“ You applaud,” said Lady Boyd Hop- 
jay, when it was ended. “You appre- 
ciate Leoncavallo?” 

“ As a trout appreciates real flies 


22 


after dinner on an angler’s imitations 
of fur and feathers. The man is essen- 
tially modern; that is his charm! He 
and Mascagni are the pioneers of the 
new lyric school, dramatic, picturesque, 
subtle — impressionistic, in a word.” 

“ But will their works live?” 

“ Dear lady, the writer who writes, 
the painter who paints, the composer 
who composes, for posterity, forge fet- 
ters for future generations.” 

Lady Boyd began to think she had 
got hold of a musical critic. 

But the programme of the evening 
included a recitation. 

“‘The Stars’ Secret: the Honorable 
Glenalva Auchterlony, ’ ” she read from 
a psge of white and gold. 

“ The Scotch heiress ; I know her aunt, 
the Duchess of Claveboisie. So Miss 


23 


Auchterlony recites. Does she do it 
well? I have never yet heard her/’ 

“ Then I can promise you a new sen- 
sation. I am never tired of hearing 
her.” 

The phrase had something of familiar 
in the ears of the lady who listened. 

“ She has dramatic talent?” 

“ None whatever.” 

“ Then the sensation you promise is 
the reverse of pleasurable?” 

“ Exactly. If you have any artistic 
insight, any appreciation of plastik, any 
critical capability for the enjoyment of 
elocutionary sonorities and cadences, 
you will suffer acutely, as I do.” 

“ But you said that you were never 
tired of hearing her.” 

“No more am I — because the torture 
she causes me to undergo is in itself 


24 


a perfect thing — by reason of its com- 
pleteness. ” The loosely clad man threw 
back his head, folded his hands, and 
narrowed his lids to the chink of intent 
observation as the young lady com- 
menced. The recitation ended amid 
applause. 

Lady Boyd began to realize that she 
was wrong in not knowing exactly who 
this personage was. But the young 
lady snatched her eyes. 

“ What tints ! what contour !” she 
murmured underneath her lifted pince- 
nez. 

“ Perfect as a pink pearl.” 

“ But ah ! what an accent !” 

“ Recently imported from north of 
the Tweed. To me that Caledonian 
burr is invaluable. It is the ‘feather’ in 
the diamond,” 


25 


“ Most people prefer their diamonds 
without feathers.” 

“ Not so I. Contrast heightens charm. 
A regret lends exquisiteness to the sub- 
tlety of artistic joy.” 

“ Then your ideal would be a beau- 
tiful woman with a squint?” 

“ Ah, thank you. To be so compre- 
hended gives one hope. One has not 
lived in vain, or written vainly.” 

“ I think” — it was more a thought 
thinking itself than the utterance of a 
conjecture — “ that you must be Mr. 
Egg?” 

He bowed gratifiedly. 

“ At your service.” 

The crowd parted. The tall red- 
haired young lady who had enlisted the 
fastidious suffrages of Egg was borne 


26 


toward them upon a sea of masculine 
compliments. He raised his finely- 
marked eyebrows as he heard. 

“ Appreciative criticisms are cystal- 
lized violets. These coarsely ^dis- 
criminating expressions of approval 
are ” 

“ Candied peel and French plums.” 

“ Dear Lady Boyd Hopjay, we must 
know one another better.” 

It did not strike her as an imperti- 
nence, coming from the source it owned. 
But just then Viscount Pontarlet pre- 
sented a young lady. 

“ Miss Auchterlony, Lady Boyd Hop- 
jay.” 

“I l m just glad,” said the red-haired 
young lady who had recited, “ to have 
the opportunity of meeting. I have an 
uncle who will be talking about Lady 



AS A WHEEL TOUCHED THE BRINK EGG LEAPED OUT 

Page 34. 





29 


Boyd Hopjay all day long. Colonel 
Auchterlony, of the Imperial Hussars. 
And he knew your ladyship in India.” 

Lady Boyd Hopjay warmed under 
her pearl powder. The red moustache 
that had muffled whispered vows of 
eternal devotion at moonlight picnics 
and morning rides rose again flamboy- 
ant in her mind’s eye. The niece’s 
beauty had prepossessed her, the asso- 
ciation with the past rendered her at- 
tractive. She took the gloved hand — 
rather a large one — and looked at her 
with mellow interest. 

The Honorable Glenalva Auchter- 
lony grew suddenly pink. Her brave, 
straightforward blue eyes fell. She 
had encountered the intent dark gaze 
of Egg, who leaned against a por- 
phyry pillar supporting a basket of 


30 


trailing orchids, with his arms folded 
and his loosely clothed legs crossed. 
If he was impertinent, there was a cer- 
tain cachet in his way of doing things, 
and he was distinguished, successful, 
certainly a person whom it was desir- 
able to know. 

As Lady Boyd Hopjay’s glance trav- 
elled from one to the other, her familiar 
spirit made a suggestion in her ear. 
Her master passion leapt into a blaze ; 
her pet hobby trotted up and knelt for 
its mistress to mount it. She all but 
uttered the word aloud — 

“ I must marry these two people !” 


CHAPTER II. 


So she asked them down to Stokehole 
for September. 

It was a select house-party, including 
the Archbishop and several married 
couples of Lady Boyd Hopjay’s own 
making. There were the Anerleys, and 
the DeGrewsomes — there would have 
been Lady Ali Bhye and her connubial 
chains of pearls, but that she was on 
her way to Bombay, because the Chief- 
Justice was on his to London. There 
was a pretty little ingenue with an 
elderly aunt, who wrote society novels; 
there was a vapid young peer, Lord 
Dudley Haymarsh, upon whom, in the 
interest of the ingenue , the hostess had 


32 


benevolent designs ; and there were two 
or three stray guardsmen to fill up 
chinks and keep things going. There 
were also, as I have intimated, Glenalva 
Auchterlony and Egg. 

Lady Boyd Hopjay, in furtherance of 
her aim, encouraged her visitors to take 
fresh air and Norfolk scenery in couples, 
as the animals came out of Noah’s ark. 
To that end she kept many dogcarts and 
pony carriages. No chaperon of any 
dignity would stoop, she shrewdly 
guessed, to occupy the back seat of the 
former kind of conveyance, or the front 
seat of the other. A groom was the 
most effective guardian of the proprie- 
ties — out driving. 

Egg did not shoot. It was his pride 
to do none of the things that ordinary 
men did. Upon the second noon, after 


33 


lunch, Lady Boyd suggested that he 
should drive Miss Auchterlony over to 
Sieveking. 

“The plan is charming,” said he, 
“ but needs one change in the pro- 
gramme to make it perfect. Let Miss 
Auchterlony drive me. To be swiftly 
carried through an exquisite landscape 
at the guiding will of a beautiful woman 
— what could be more enjoyable?” He 
conveyed again that impression of say- 
ing something quite inoffensively that 
would have sounded impertinent from 
another man. 

He had taken it for granted that she 
could drive — and he was not mistaken. 
She had a firm hand, and a masterly 
mode of handling the whip. The cob 
in harness owned a prejudice against 
threshing-machines, and passing by a 


34 


brickyard while one of those red and 
blue spiders was in motion* shied, 
jibbed, and refused to go on. The 
owner of the machine, seeing the diffi- 
culty, offered to have the engine 
stopped, but Miss Auchterlony posi- 
tively refused. 

“No, I thank you,” said she, tight- 
ening her lips. “ It is ridiculous, the 
giving in to a beast like that. He 
shall pass it, if I keep him here all 
day.” 

The result was a tussle. The dog- 
cart backed toward a ditch with green 
slime in it. As a wheel touched the 
brink Egg leaped out, but rather awk- 
wardly. 

“ Oh, no, I will not have you lead him 
by the bridle!” cried Glenalva, plying 
whip and rein. But Egg had held no 


35 


such intention. He walked to a neigh- 
boring stile, dusted the upper step with 
his pocket handkerchief, sat down, 
folded his arms, and regarded the spec- 
tacle with cool artistic appreciation. 
The struggle ended in victory for the 
holder of the whip : the cob went on, 
and Egg got in again. 

“ Superb !” he said. “ Feminine will 
versus brute force. You have given me 
a capital subject for another essay.” 

“ I suppose literary people sometimes 
will be very hard up for something to 
write about,” Glenalva remarked. 

Egg shuddered. 

“ The common herd, who grow dirty 
bread out of muddy brains, perhaps. 
The writer whose vocation is writing, 
pure and simple, will wait months, 
years, until he finds a subject worthy 


36 


to be adorned by his art, glorified by 
his genius, and given to the world.” 

“ And the editors will be using bad 
language while they are waiting,” sug- 
gested his companion ; “ and his wife 
will be coming to complain that there 
are no joints for dinner.” 

“Do I look,” said Egg coldly, “like 
a man who was employed by editors, 
who had a wife, and who fed upon 
joints?” 

She turned the blue jewels of her 
glance upon him for an instant, and 
then looked back at the cob’s ears. 

“ Indeed I think you do not,” she an- 
swered. 

“ You are an exquisite aggregation of 
contrasts,” said Egg, regaining his 
equanimity ; “ the perfectly beautiful 
body ” 


37 


“ Mr. Egg !” Glenalva turned as red 
as her superb hair. 

“ The purely divine physical condi- 
tions informed by a mind tinctured — 
you will pardon me — with earthly gross- 
ness.” 

“ I am very much obliged,” said she. 

"‘Now you are offended,” Egg re- 
marked, “ when I would not, if I could, 
have you changed for the world. You 
delight me. I drink you in. I bathe in 
you continually.” 

The groom behind coughed. Glenalva 
whipped up the cob, who instantly 
bolted. After fifteen exciting minutes 
the lodge gates of Sieveking raced into 
view. The cob came to a standstill 
under a clump of beeches. They 
alighted, passed in between rampant 
heraldic monsters, and walked up the 


38 


broad avenue together, between hedges 
of immemorial yew. 

“ I do not care much about houses,” 
jaid Glenalva. “ I would prefer to walk 
round the gardens, if you do not mind 
going by yourself.” 

Egg would not hear of leaving her. 

The Sieveking gardens consisted of a 
huge central enclosure from which ra- 
diated twelve smaller, one for each 
month of the year. All the flowers 
immortalized in the verses of the Eliza- 
bethan poets bloomed at Sieveking, in 
their proper season, grown from seeds 
carefully treasured by generations of 
skilful gardeners. Here might be seen 
stocks and sweetwilliams four feet 
high, gigantic sunflowers and holly- 
hocks, and Brobdingnagian marigolds, 
larkspurs and carnations, and striped 


39 


cabbage roses that might have bloomed 
upon insteps of Tudor shoes, with the 
five-leaved York and Lancaster flowers, 
that have shed their white and red 
petals over many a page of history. 

The garden seemed to give Miss 
Auchterlony pleasure. She walked 
about until she was tired, and then sat 
down on a moss-grown bench under 
a gnarled acacia, where a stone bull- 
dog had kept guard for nearly three 
centuries past. She pulled off her 
glove, and patted his weather-worn 
head. 

“ Times have changed with you, you 
poor old fellow,” she said in her 
Scotch voice, “ since you used to watch 
Anne Boylen walking in the morfling, 
with her kirtle pinned up out of the 
dew — 


40 


“ ‘ To pluck sweet seteywall, 

The honeysuckle, the harlock ; 

The lily and the lady-smock, 

To deck her summer hall, ’ 

“ Do I quote badly, Mr. Egg?” Egg 
had shuddered, and she had seen him. 

“ Infamously. But,” as she reddened 
fiercely, and looked at him full, opening 
her blue eyes and expanding her nos- 
trils, “ it would be all wrong if you did 
it right. You are you, and your faults 
are a part of you. Even your physical 
personal defects render you more un- 
speakably precious to the seeing eye. 
A very clever woman — you know her — 
said to me not long ago, ‘Mr. Egg, your 
ideal of perfection is a beautiful girl 
with a cast in her eye — a squinting 
goddess!’ She spoke the truth !” 

Miss Auchterlony’s delicate skin was 





THEN SAT DOWN ON A MOSS-GROWN BENCH 

Page 3Q. 











43 


now one flame. If she could have 
burnt him with the indignant fires of 
her eyes, I think she could have seen 
him frizzle cheerfully. The emotion 
under which she labored contracted the 
orbital muscles, the defect which Egg’s 
enthusiasm had lauded as a charm was 
at once and obviously apparent. What 
she would have said she did not utter. 
She turned away and left the garden, 
Egg following her languidly. W alking 
swiftly down the yew avenue she passed 
the gates, outside which the groom 
waited with the trap. She mounted to 
the driver’s seat, snatched the reins and 
drove away. The groom with profes- 
sional alertness bounded to his seat be- 
hind, but Egg was forced to run some 
little distance before he could even gain 
the vantage of the step. He hated run- 


44 


ning. The j ourney home was performed 
in silence. 

“ Did you enjoy your drive?” asked 
Lady Boyd Hopjay that night, looking 
maternally in upon Glenalva in her 
dressing-room. 

“ Oh, yes, Lady Boyd Hopjay, I en- 
joyed the drive,” Glenalva answered. 

Lady Boyd Hopjay knew how to ap- 
proach a subject delicately. No col- 
lector with a tin box and a butterfly 
net was ever more cautious in ap- 
proaching a specimen. 

“ And the cob? Prince Prigio some- 
times gives trouble.” 

“ He was for kicking his capers, but I 
was there with the whip,” said Glenalva 
bluntly. 

“ And your companion? You were an 
envied girl. To tread those historic 


45 


alleys, to stroll through those wonder- 
ful rooms, with Mr. Egg. He was very 
gifted and subtle?” 

“He was very afraid when the cob was 
nearly backing the trap into a green 
ditch. He jumped out,” said Glen- 
alva. 

“ Perhaps he is nervous. These high- 
strung natures sometimes are.” 

“ Oh, no, he is not nervous! He told 
me to my face that I had a mind tinct- 
ured with earthily grossness, and that I 
quoted verses infamously, and that one 
of my eyes does not look quite straight ; 
and you will see that this last remark 
is the most insulting of all, because 
there is” — she lifted her eyes — “ some 
truth in it.” 

“ My dear, you confound me. Did 
he say all these things, really?” 


46 


“ Oh, yes, and worse. He said that 
delighted him, and he drank me in and 
bathed in me, and my moral and per- 
sonal defects made me all the more un- 
speakably precious.” 

Ah — h — h ! I thought so. My dear, 
you have made a conquest. One of the 
most brilliant minds of the day. And 
he positively adores you.” 

"Well, then, all I can say is” — Glen- 
alva threw back her long, tawny tresses 
of hair over one superb shoulder — “ it 
was a very” (she pronounced very 
"varry,” and was “ wass”) "queer way 
he had of showing it. Good-night, 
Lady Boyd Hopjay. 


CHAPTER HI. 


“ You are attracted,” said Lady Boyd 
Hopjay. “ It is patent to the most ob- 
serving.” 

“ I will admit that something in her 
beckons to something in me,” said Egg. 
He leaned against the mantelpiece — In- 
dian wood and heavily carved ; and his 
brown suit and umber tie were in har- 
mony. He stroked, or rather pressed, 
back his fine, silky hair — there was not 
much of it, but what there was, was 
beautifully arranged — with a white hand 
upon which an engraved sapphire shone 
darkly. In his buttonhole was the 
petalless calyx of a rose. It might have 


48 


been the emblem of his creed of beauty 
in unloveliness. 

“ She is very young,” said Lady Boyd 
Hopjay, smiling mellowly, “ and rather 
farouche. You puzzle her: she admits 
it frankly.” 

“Bewilderment is the first phase,” 
said Egg. “ Then comes curiosity, in- 
creased with the first trembling of the 
star-sown veil to a panting desire to 
know, to understand. Then, and not 
till then, the delirium of bedazzlement 
which accompanies the full revelation, 
when every sense throbs in unison with 
the choral strophes, and the charmed 
vision drinks in the glory of the god- 
dess.” 

After this conversation Glenalva 
found herself a little shunned by the 
male portion of the company, for 


49 


Lady Boyd Hopjay had whispered here 
and there, without intending to estab- 
lish a real fact, any more than the orig- 
inal author of the tale of the Three 
Black Crows: 

“ He is very much attracted. And 
she? You know the beginning is be- 
wilderment. But I hope for the lifting 
of the veil. And they are eminently 
suited to each other.” 

So other men fought shy, and Glen- 
alva was thrown more and more into 
the society of Egg. 

“ Are you writing anything just now?” 
she asked him once, in the conservatory. 

“ I am making a story,” said Egg. 

“ For ” she was going to ask for 

what magazine or paper, but remem- 
bered that she did not care, and stopped 
short 


50 


“ For you and me,” he answered. 

“ Oh !” Glenalva said, feeling that she 
ought to be grateful. “ What is it 
about?” 

“ About us both,” said Egg, narrowing 
his eyes and smiling inscrutably. 

“ Have you seen the Japanese passion- 
flower bloom?” asked Glenalva, turning 
a little awkwardly to the plant stands. 

“ I am more interested,” said Egg, “ in 
watching the unfolding of a soul.” 

“ Indeed,” said Glenalva, smothering 
a yawn. “ I hope it is a nice soul.” 

“ It has beauty,” said Egg, “ and ugli- 
ness, depth and shallowness, like any 
other soul. But it is yours; and when 
its petals expand” — he bent over her — 
“ it will be mine.” 

“ Oh !” said Glenalva, for the second 
time, but in quite another key. 


5i 


“ — Mine, to watch its development, to 
prune away its grosser growths, to glory 
in its graciousness, to breathe its per- 
fume daily.” He bent over her; she 
fancied that his pale classical nose 
touched her hair. 

“ What does this mean?” she cried. 

“ Let us never ask, dearest, ” whispered 
Egg, “ what it means. It is a mystery. 
Hush!” 

“ Are you mad?” demanded Miss 
Auchterlony hotly. 

“ Mine is a Bacchic frenzy,” mur- 
mured Egg. “ I have drunk of the wine 
of life, and it mantles in the blood and 
fires the brain.” 

His lips touched hers. Miss Auchter- 
lony uttered a vigorous expression of 
anger and disdain, and thrust him stren- 
uously from her as she recoiled, turned, 


52 


and fled. There was a sound of crack- 
ing and rending, a rumbling avalanche 
of flower-pots, a crashing of glass. Egg 
had collapsed amid the horticultural 
glories of Lady Boyd Hopjay’s conser- 
vatory. 

He appeared at dinner with a strip of 
black court-plaster decorating his pale 
forehead, and several scratches upon the 
backs of his white hands. There was 
an incursion of outside guests, and Egg 
and Miss Auchterlony did not neighbor 
one another at table. Her burning 
cheeks and disturbed avoidance of him, 
however, were remarked. It was all 
over the house, and had leaped out into 
the country by luncheon on the follow- 
ing day, that the Scotch heiress and the 
gifted English critic, poet, and essayist 
were engaged. 



SHE TURNED AWAY AND PRETENDED TO BE LOOKING 
AT A PICTURE OVER THE FIREPLACE. Page bl. 





























































































































































55 


Lady Boyd Hopjay surprised Glen- 
alva by drawing her aside and kissing 
her on the brow with exulting solemnity. 

“You are a dear, natural girl. This 
is what I have hoped — almost prayed 
for. And you have a prize such as sel- 
dom falls to the lot of woman. He is 
so brilliant, so incisive, original, full of 
lofty thought, redolent of culture.” 

“ Who?” 

“ Shy child !” She tapped the bewil- 
dered girl upon the chin. 

“ I shall never understand English 
people,” thought Glenalva. “ They do 
not talk plainly, but play hide-and-seek 
with you in corners.” Then a sudden 
unpleasant recollection occurred to her, 
and she said: “Lady Boyd Hopjay, I 
would be sorry to make a complaint, 
but one of the gentlemen staying in this 


56 


house has behaved very badly. We 
were looking at the Japanese passion- 
flower in the conservatory, and he 
talked very strangely, and came very 
near, and at last he had the imperti- 
nence to kiss me. And I knocked him in 
among the flower-pots, and I am afraid 
he was hurt; but he behaved very 
badly, all the same.” 

“You piece of nature!” Lady Boyd 
Hopjay embraced her with a gush of 
delight. “We must tell him this.” 

“ Him?” 

“ I like that little instinct of conceal- 
ment. And we keep apart and try to 
look haughty when he draws near. But 
the veil has been uplifted — a little way. 
Is it not so? You darling!” 

“ These English men and women are 
all mad !” thought poor Glenalva as she 


57 


escaped, “ and I wish I were back with 
my aunt at Clamboisie.” 

Her aunt must have heard from Lady 
Boyd Hopjay, for within a few days she 
received a letter from her. 

“ I am given to understand,” the 
Duchess wrote, “ that you have formed 
an attachment for a certain Egg. Of 
course he is a dazzling personage, and 
I can understand a girl’s infatuation; 
but you are not yet your own mistress. 
And let me advise you to make no de- 
cision affecting your future life in a 
hurry. I will say no more, only that I 
think an old and affectionate relative 
might have been admitted at first hand 
into her niece’s confidence.” 

“ Everybody is mad,” said Glenalva 
when she had finished, “ and I shall be 
going mad myself, if something does 


58 


not happen, now I know what every- 
body has been thinking of all along. 
Oh, this man ! this hateful man ! It is 
all his doing, and I must do some- 
thing !” 

She drummed upon a pane of the 
drawing-room window, looking out at 
the night, the velvet-palled garden, and 
the shining stars. It was after dinner, 
and the ladies gathered round the 
piano, were trickling out their little 
songs and waltzes, while the men yet 
delayed their longed-for entrance from 
the dining-room. 

“ Do not look at that star so much, 
my dear; I cannot give it you.” 

She recognized the voice, though not 
the quotation, and turned. 

“ Mr. Egg,” she said in low, plain 
tones, “ I wish to speak to you.” 


59 


“ ‘Appoint the spot, 

And there beneath the cold rays of the moon, 
Or the sere boughs of sunburned forest oak, 
I will await thee. ’ ” 

“ It shall be in none of those places,” 
said Glenalva, feeling how useless her 
dignity was, “ but in the billiard-room.” 

She marched off. Those who had 
seen but not overheard the colloquy 
exchanged looks of intelligence. 

“ A tryst,” murmured Lady Boyd 
Hopjay, as Egg, shedding a slow smile 
upon her, drifted gently away. 

“You have behaved dreadfully, and 
not like a gentleman ; but you can undo 
what you have done, and I will forgive 
you for that, if ever I can. You have 
put things wrong, and Lady Boyd Hop- 


6o 


jay has helped you; and now you must 
put things right. What do you shake 
your head at? Oh !” cried Glenalva, “ is 
it possible that you refuse?” 

“ I refuse to render back,” said Egg, 
” the priceless gift that you have given 
me. This is the wild primeval instinct. 
The viking’s daughter valued not the 
lover who did not claim her against her 
will and take her by strength of arm.” 
He smiled a rather ugly smile. “ I have 
already shed blood in your service, my 
red-white queen.” 

He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket 
and caught her left hand. Before she 
could wrench it free a diamond half- 
hoop was slipped over the tip of the 
third finger and forced down to the 
fork. Then the door closed behind him. 
He had gone. 


6i 


Glenalva tore off the ring. Being a 
woman, she looked at the diamonds be- 
fore she threw them away. They were 
good ones. Inside on the hand were 
engraved the simple words : “ Glenalva, 
from Arthur. September, 1893.” 

With those hideously juxtaposed 
words branded on the ornament, she 
could not leave it lying on the floor; 
she dropped it loathingly to the bottom 
of her pocket, and burst into tears. 
Somebody came into the room, and 
she turned away and pretended to be 
looking at a picture over the fireplace, 
but the chimney-glass betrayed her 
grief. 

“ Miss Auchterlony ! I beg your par- 
don, but is there anything the mat- 
ter?” 

The speaker was a young guardsman 


62 


to whom she had scarcely spoken. She 
knew that his name was Saville, and 
that he came of literary parentage. 

“ Nothing,” she said inconsequently, 
trying to stifle her sobs. Then she 
added inconsequently that she wished 
she was dead. 

“Forgive me,” said Saville; “but I 
have an idea that — that — that Mr. Egg 
has been unkind to you. Of course, 
under the circumstances, I have no 
right to interfere.” 

“ There are no circumstances !” Glen- 
alva cried. “ Why does everybody per- 
sist in pretending that I am engaged to 
that man — when I hate him — hate him 
— hate him !” 

“ So do I,” said Saville ; “ and he hates 
me because of my name. My father 
reviews his books in The Sixth-Day 


63 


Review. Won’t you tell me what he 
has done?” 

Glenalva told him. 

“H’m! I see,” said Saville. “The 
whole thing is a ‘rush.’ ” 

“Indeed I should not care for that,” 
said Glenalva, who was not an adept at 
slang, “ but for the things people will be 
saying. He has behaved worse than 
abominably. Ah !” she cried, “ there 
ought to be a man to beat him.” 

“ There shall be,” cried Saville, tak- 
ing fire at her, “ if I may be the man !” 

“A moment, Mr. Egg.” 

“How lightly,” smiled Egg, “people 
ask for a moment out of each other’s 
lives. Why, a whole aeon of joy or an- 
guish may be contained in a moment.” 

“ What kind of experience this partic- 


64 


ular moment contains for you will 
solely depend upon your own behavior, 
said the youth, who had derived certain 
verbal felicities from his parentage. 
" Lady Boyd Hopjay, may I beg you, 
on the behalf of Miss Auchterlony, to 
remain?” 

The scene took place in the morning- 
room directly after breakfast. 

“ You ask me,” said Egg calmly, “ to 
acknowledge that I have behaved like a 
scoundrel and a cur. We are all scoun- 
drels and curs at times. I do not boast 
to be superior to my fellows. But as 
to giving up this lady, it is out of the 
question. She is mine — my wife.” 

“ Your wife!” echoed Saville. 

“ His wife?” cried Glenalva indig- 
nantly. “Never!” 

“ My wife by the law of fitness and 


65 


the affinity of souls !” said Egg calmly. 
His sapphire gleamed as he pointed to 
Glenalva. “ Her being has been spirit- 
ually merged in mine. Thoughts, 
cherub smiling thoughts, have been 
born of the amalgamation of our intel- 
lects ” 

He stopped, because Saville strode 
toward him. Lady Boyd Hopjay 
screamed. Egg drew back abruptly. 

“ Do not let us degrade ourselves by 
a crude manifestation of brute instinct,” 
he said rather hurriedly. “ Let me re- 
flect a moment.” 

“Not a moment!” said Saville. 
Apologize to the lady and leave the 
house, or stay and take what I have 
got for you.” 

“I go!” 

Egg turned to Glenalva. 


66 


“ Do not think that I blame you,” he 
said mellowly. “ You acted as you have 
acted because you could not do other- 
wise. What has been was to be, and 
could not have been otherwise. The 
glow and glory of your nature drew 
mine, as the height and clarity, the 
intense spiritual vitality of mine at- 
tracted you. But what has been is 
no more. The time ' has been very 
precious. I have known perfect joy 
through you. I have tasted perfect 
suffering through you again.” 

“ Do you mean when I knocked you 
in among the flower-pots?” burst out 
Glenalva. 

Saville roared, but Egg had contrived 
to make his exit. Lady Boyd Hopjay 
burst into tears. She had set her mind 
upon marrying him. 


67 


It was she who married him, after all. 
As for Glenalva, she chose to throw 
herself away upon a lieutenant in the 
guards. The Duchess was furious. 
Life is made up of good intentions and 
blunders such as these. 




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